"Healthy Question: What’s All The Shouting Really About?"
Healthy question: What’s all the shouting really about?
By ALAN BAVLEY and DAVE HELLING - The Kansas City Star
Until recently, health care reform was a wonkish and mind-numbing blur.
The issues — tax policy, employer mandates, community-rated insurance plans — required the combined expertise of a doctor, an economist, a lawyer and an actuary to fully grasp.
But ever since Congress stopped talking and went into recess several weeks ago, the health care reform debate has grown white-hot. Topping the bill are the issues of euthanasia, abortion, illegal immigration, federal ID cards, socialized medicine …
“People have got genuine concerns,” said Christian Morgan, a political consultant and former executive director of the Kansas Republican Party. “They’re reacting because they’re not sure what’s going on at all. They don’t trust Washington. They don’t trust the government.
“The Democrats can complain all they want about Republicans trying to mislead the public, but the fact is there’s a lot of confusing information out there. The Democrats have been trying to jam this down everyone’s throats for the past couple of months, and they’re just not buying it anymore.”
But many of the allegations being made about health care reform have been based on misreadings or misrepresentations of what’s in the House bill’s 1,000-plus pages.
Other allegations have no basis in the bill at all. One example: A recent charge by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin that the Democrats’ reform plans include a “death panel,” bureaucrats who would decide who is worthy of health care.
“Such a system is downright evil,” Palin said on her Facebook page.
Independent, nonpartisan organizations such as PolitiFact.com have debunked Palin’s assertion and some of the other more remarkable claims:
•A commissioner of health choices would decide your health benefits for you.
•Health care reform supported by Democrats will require Americans to subsidize abortion with tax dollars.
•All non-U.S. citizens would get free health care.
Wrong, wrong and wrong, PolitiFact says.
“Health care is not simple, and when something is not simple, it opens the gates to lots of rumors and erroneous information. It fills in the gaps. It’s news,” said Betty Houchin Winfield, an expert on political communications at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism.
Supporters of reform have to share the responsibility for letting these issues sidetrack their plans, Winfield said.
President Lyndon Johnson firmly guided the development of Medicare. President Franklin Roosevelt did the same with Social Security.
But President Barack Obama has allowed Congress to debate health care reform and come up with its own plan, Winfield said. So far, Congress hasn’t been able to agree, and that’s left a vacuum for rumors to fill.
Obama launched a four-state push for health care reform on Friday with a town-hall-style meeting in Montana. He plans a similar meeting today in Grand Junction, Colo.
“The president is trying to do a catch-up,” Winfield said. “But there’s still so much confusion.”
Count Clifford Leegard, 63, of Lenexa, among the perplexed.
“Obama’s got his own idea, and it sounds wonderful until it comes down to the details in Congress,” the railroad signal engineer said. “He’s talking in generalities, but how can you get from here to there?”
Leegard has heard that with reform, if you need an expensive operation, “your doctor has got to submit something to a central agency and a tribunal or something will decide.”
“That’s a concern of old people,” he said. “I don’t want to be euthanized.”
The allegations have proliferated on TV and radio, in blogs and e-mails, and at acrimonious town hall meetings: That the reform measures Congress and the president are proposing will lead to euthanasia. That the elderly will be denied treatment or coerced to give it up. That bureaucrats will decide who will live or die.
The angry turn in the debate “breaks my heart,” said Myra Christopher, who for a quarter century has been crusading for better end-of-life care.
As president of the Kansas City-based Center for Practical Bioethics, Christopher has been encouraging people to sign living wills and let doctors and family know what treatments they want or don’t want during their final days.
It’s become one of the most sizzling hot buttons in the debate. Reform will lead, so the allegation goes, to mandatory counseling of the elderly to seek a quick exit when their treatment becomes expensive.
“I’m not interested in shortening anybody’s life,” Christopher said. “We all need to talk to our families about these issues; we all need to talk to our doctors about these issues.”
These are the kinds of discussions that Christopher said she advises doctors and patients to have, to go over legal options such as living wills and medical services like palliative care and hospice.
But on talk shows and in e-mails, this voluntary option has been described as mandatory, a way to save Medicare money by encouraging euthanasia.
Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York and longtime health reform critic, gave this description on the radio show of former senator Fred Thompson:
“Congress would make it mandatory — absolutely require — that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner.”
Both PolitiFact and Snopes .com, a Web site that investigates urban legends, have concluded that this claim is false.
Christopher said the consultation provision just corrects an omission in the existing law.
In 1990, Christopher worked with Sen. Jack Danforth, a Missouri Republican, to pass the Patient Self-Determination Act. The law requires hospitals, nursing homes and home health agencies that receive Medicare to advise patients about their rights to accept or refuse care. They also must ask patients whether they have an advance directive, such as a living will, and provide information on how to create one.
The law excludes doctors because they had objected to being required to provide this time-consuming service without being reimbursed by Medicare, Christopher said.
The health reform bill gives doctors that financial incentive, she said.
But whether that measure will be included in a final reform bill is in doubt.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican who is one of the chief health reform negotiators, said this week that the Senate Finance Committee has dropped consideration of end-of-life provisions “because of the way they could be misinterpreted or implemented incorrectly.”
Christopher is dismayed that it’s becoming controversial to discuss end-of-life care.
“To imagine that that’s a bad thing is beyond me,” she said.
By ALAN BAVLEY and DAVE HELLING - The Kansas City Star
Until recently, health care reform was a wonkish and mind-numbing blur.
The issues — tax policy, employer mandates, community-rated insurance plans — required the combined expertise of a doctor, an economist, a lawyer and an actuary to fully grasp.
But ever since Congress stopped talking and went into recess several weeks ago, the health care reform debate has grown white-hot. Topping the bill are the issues of euthanasia, abortion, illegal immigration, federal ID cards, socialized medicine …
“People have got genuine concerns,” said Christian Morgan, a political consultant and former executive director of the Kansas Republican Party. “They’re reacting because they’re not sure what’s going on at all. They don’t trust Washington. They don’t trust the government.
“The Democrats can complain all they want about Republicans trying to mislead the public, but the fact is there’s a lot of confusing information out there. The Democrats have been trying to jam this down everyone’s throats for the past couple of months, and they’re just not buying it anymore.”
But many of the allegations being made about health care reform have been based on misreadings or misrepresentations of what’s in the House bill’s 1,000-plus pages.
Other allegations have no basis in the bill at all. One example: A recent charge by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin that the Democrats’ reform plans include a “death panel,” bureaucrats who would decide who is worthy of health care.
“Such a system is downright evil,” Palin said on her Facebook page.
Independent, nonpartisan organizations such as PolitiFact.com have debunked Palin’s assertion and some of the other more remarkable claims:
•A commissioner of health choices would decide your health benefits for you.
•Health care reform supported by Democrats will require Americans to subsidize abortion with tax dollars.
•All non-U.S. citizens would get free health care.
Wrong, wrong and wrong, PolitiFact says.
“Health care is not simple, and when something is not simple, it opens the gates to lots of rumors and erroneous information. It fills in the gaps. It’s news,” said Betty Houchin Winfield, an expert on political communications at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism.
Supporters of reform have to share the responsibility for letting these issues sidetrack their plans, Winfield said.
President Lyndon Johnson firmly guided the development of Medicare. President Franklin Roosevelt did the same with Social Security.
But President Barack Obama has allowed Congress to debate health care reform and come up with its own plan, Winfield said. So far, Congress hasn’t been able to agree, and that’s left a vacuum for rumors to fill.
Obama launched a four-state push for health care reform on Friday with a town-hall-style meeting in Montana. He plans a similar meeting today in Grand Junction, Colo.
“The president is trying to do a catch-up,” Winfield said. “But there’s still so much confusion.”
Count Clifford Leegard, 63, of Lenexa, among the perplexed.
“Obama’s got his own idea, and it sounds wonderful until it comes down to the details in Congress,” the railroad signal engineer said. “He’s talking in generalities, but how can you get from here to there?”
Leegard has heard that with reform, if you need an expensive operation, “your doctor has got to submit something to a central agency and a tribunal or something will decide.”
“That’s a concern of old people,” he said. “I don’t want to be euthanized.”
The allegations have proliferated on TV and radio, in blogs and e-mails, and at acrimonious town hall meetings: That the reform measures Congress and the president are proposing will lead to euthanasia. That the elderly will be denied treatment or coerced to give it up. That bureaucrats will decide who will live or die.
The angry turn in the debate “breaks my heart,” said Myra Christopher, who for a quarter century has been crusading for better end-of-life care.
As president of the Kansas City-based Center for Practical Bioethics, Christopher has been encouraging people to sign living wills and let doctors and family know what treatments they want or don’t want during their final days.
It’s become one of the most sizzling hot buttons in the debate. Reform will lead, so the allegation goes, to mandatory counseling of the elderly to seek a quick exit when their treatment becomes expensive.
“I’m not interested in shortening anybody’s life,” Christopher said. “We all need to talk to our families about these issues; we all need to talk to our doctors about these issues.”
These are the kinds of discussions that Christopher said she advises doctors and patients to have, to go over legal options such as living wills and medical services like palliative care and hospice.
But on talk shows and in e-mails, this voluntary option has been described as mandatory, a way to save Medicare money by encouraging euthanasia.
Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York and longtime health reform critic, gave this description on the radio show of former senator Fred Thompson:
“Congress would make it mandatory — absolutely require — that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner.”
Both PolitiFact and Snopes .com, a Web site that investigates urban legends, have concluded that this claim is false.
Christopher said the consultation provision just corrects an omission in the existing law.
In 1990, Christopher worked with Sen. Jack Danforth, a Missouri Republican, to pass the Patient Self-Determination Act. The law requires hospitals, nursing homes and home health agencies that receive Medicare to advise patients about their rights to accept or refuse care. They also must ask patients whether they have an advance directive, such as a living will, and provide information on how to create one.
The law excludes doctors because they had objected to being required to provide this time-consuming service without being reimbursed by Medicare, Christopher said.
The health reform bill gives doctors that financial incentive, she said.
But whether that measure will be included in a final reform bill is in doubt.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican who is one of the chief health reform negotiators, said this week that the Senate Finance Committee has dropped consideration of end-of-life provisions “because of the way they could be misinterpreted or implemented incorrectly.”
Christopher is dismayed that it’s becoming controversial to discuss end-of-life care.
“To imagine that that’s a bad thing is beyond me,” she said.
Labels: Keeping them honest, Public health
posted by KYJurisDoctor at 9:21 AM
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